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Thread : Building Encounters for Mutants and Masterminds 3e
Started at Jan 28 '13 6:40pm by Witchslasher
Visit at https://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=198752
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[Post 1]
Author : Witchslasher
Date : Jan 28 '13 6:40pm
Thread Title : Building Encounters for Mutants and Masterminds 3e
This is from a post I found on Atomic Think Tank long ago (that I can't find anymore, so if someone can find it and credit the original creator, please do so and I'll add it into this post) and thought I'd post here for any new (or maybe even old) MnM 3e GMs along with some of my own thoughts. The idea is to give a way to easily and effectively build balanced encounters for your heroes to go up against. I will be the first to tell you that it's not 100 percent accurate as not all effects are created equal, but this should give you a good baseline on where to start. I've used this system for just about every encounter in my Justice League: Legacy (http://www.myth-weavers.com/game.php?g=10613) game and found it to be very helpful.
Step 1: How Dangerous?
Encounters are rated by how dangerous they are, or how difficult it will be for the players to overcome them:
TABLE 1: ENCOUNTER DANGER RANK
Danger Rank: Description
0: No Danger; there is almost no possible way that the PCs could suffer injury, much less defeat
1: Minimal Danger; the PCs have almost no chance of being defeated
2: Modest Danger; the PCs stand to suffer some injuries if they're not careful
3: Significant Danger; the PCs are likely to win the fight, but it will require smart play to come out on top
4: Serious Danger; the PCs are going up against a real threat and could just as easily win as they could lose, and will need to play smart to win
5: Severe Danger; The PCs are going to be outmatched and without very clever gameplay and teamwork, they're more likely than not going to lose
6: Overwhelming Danger; the PCs are very likely to lose the encounter, and only tremendous luck or playing at the top of their game can see them through
Step 2: Challenge Rank
Next, you need to figure out just how many NPCs to challenge your party with (and just how powerful to make them). Depending on how challenging you wish to make the encounter (see Step 1), you can have more or fewer NPCs of higher or lower power level. To determine this, you need to determine the total Challenge Rank for the encounter:
Encounter Challenge Rank = Danger Rank x Number of Party Members
So if a group of four PCs is going to face an encounter of Serious Danger (4), then the encounter will have a total Challenge Rank of 16.
Step 3: How Many NPCs? How Strong?
The total Challenge Rank of an encounter can be distributed in any way you like among the enemies the PCs will face. You can divide the Challenge Ranks to many NPCs, or only a few. Depending on how many ranks you assign each enemy, it will change what Power Level that NPC is.
TABLE 2: NPC POWER LEVEL
NPC's Challenge Rank: NPC's Power Level
Challenge Rank 1: Party's PL -4 or lower
Challenge Rank 2: Party's PL -2 or -3
Challenge Rank 3: Party's PL -1
Challenge Rank 4: Party's PL
Challenge Rank 5-6: Party's PL + 1
Challenge Rank 7-9: Party's PL + 2
Challenge Rank 10-13: Party's PL + 3
Challenge Rank 14-19: Party's PL + 4
Challenge Rank 20+: Party's PL + 5
So long as the total Challenge Ranks of all of the enemies put together are equal to the Danger Rank x the number of PCs in the party, you'll still have an appropriate encounter for that Danger Rank. A Challenge Rank 16 encounter for a party of four PL 10 PCs could consist of four PL 10 enemies, or two PL 12 enemies, or one PL 14 enemy, or two PL 10 enemies and one PL 12 enemy, or eight PL 7 enemies, or just about any other combination you can imagine.
Simplifying
A helpful aid for this stage, especially if you're trying it for the first time, is to put a stack of poker chips or pennies in front of you for each enemy's Challenge rank. As you add or subtract enemies, or increase or decrease their power level, you can track it easily with the tokens.
Minions
Minions are weaker than villains of the same PL and their challenge ranks reflect this. Using the above notation, minions would often be worth a fraction of a challenge rank; to avoid this, minions are listed as minions per challenge rank. The minions come out of the same challenge rank budget for the encounter. For example, if you want to include challenge rank 4 worth of minions of Party PL-3, use 3 minions per challenge rank * 4 challenge rank= 12 Party PL-3 minions.
The power of minions can vary greatly with how spread out they are combined with the area attack/Takedown Attack capability of the party. Minions may not be as challenging to a particular group as these numbers suggest. This table is based on the idea that 4 minions= 1 villain of a given PL. Besides the formal minion rules, minions tend to be weaker in other ways; e.g., they generally don't have abilities like Mental Blast!
Party PL-8= 16 minions for 1 challenge rank
Party PL-7= 12 minions for 1 challenge rank
Party PL-6= 8 minions for 1 challenge rank
Party PL-5= 6 minions for 1 challenge Rank
Party PL-4= 4 minions for 1 challenge rank
Party PL-3= 3 minions for 1 challenge rank
Party PL-2= 2 minions for 1 challenge rank
Party PL-1 to Party PL= 1 minion for 1 challenge rank
I'm running a game for a group of 5 Power Level 10 heroes. We've reached the final encounter and I have two villains that I'm using. "Chunk" is a large, near mindless powerhouse character and he is teaming with Wisecrack a sort of Joker/Harley Quinn-wannabe. Since this is the final encounter of the adventure I would like the players to be challenged, but I don't want it too tough since this is the groups first adventure and some are still learning, so for my Danger Rank I've selected 3 (Significant Danger; the PCs are likely to win the fight, but it will require smart play to come out on top).
To determine my Challenge Rank I multiply the Danger Rank (3) by the number of PCs (5), giving me a Challenge Rank of 15.
Wisecrack can effectively be combated one on one by any PC, so I'm giving her a Power Level equal to the player characters (10), which will cost me 4 out of my total challenge rank (leaving me 11). Chunk is going to be the bigger threat, requiring multiple PCs to take him down. I have 11 left of my Challenge Rank, so he should be in the lower range of Power Level 13 (Party's PL + 3). To get him on the lower end of PL 13, some of his attacks and defenses are not quite to Power Level 13's cap. He has a low will, which makes him vulnerable to one of the PCs attacks (she has a Damage Effect that uses Alternate Resistance Will) and he has the complication of being mindless, meaning he will use no real tactics when fighting: He will attack whoever does the most damage to him, he will not "focus fire", he will not use team attacks, manuevers, or anything of this sort.
The next big tip about creating encounters for Mutants and Masterminds 3e is that you don't need a full character sheet for all your Villains. There are merely a few vital statistics that you need. These are Defenses, Attack Values, and Effect Ranks. Once you establish the Power Level of your villains, these numbers are easy to just come up with off the top of your head due to the PL limits Mutants and Mastermind establishes.
In the example above we have our two villains: Wisecrack and Chunk who are power level 10 and 13 respectively.
Wisecrack should be the quick one, hard to hit, but goes down quick when hit. At power level 10 the max her Dodge or Parry + Toughness can be is 20, so I decide on these defenses: Dodge and Parry of 14, Toughness of 6. She'll also be a bit low on her Fortitude + Will (max of 20), so we'll give her an 9 Fortitude and a 7 will. Her primary attack will be a comicly oversized Mallet, we'll once again shift her to have better to hit than her damage so +14 to her attack check and a Damage Effect of 6.
Chunk is slow and can both take and give a beating. His max of Dodge and Parry + Toughness is 26. I want him slightly under capped on those so give him an 8 in Dodge and Parry and a 17 in toughness. His will is low from my previous decision so I give him a 9, but max out on his Fortitude for a 17. Chunk is a heavy hitter, so I'm giving him a Strength of 18. So the max I can make his unarmed attack is +8, I decide to go ahead and lower that just a bit to +7, so he won't hit often, but when he does, it'll hit hard. Finally, since the plan is to have him dealing with multiple heroes at once, I opt to give him an Area damage attack, I'll do this as an alternate effect of his Strength Damage, that's 18 points, so with the area extra it costs 2 points per rank, so he has a Damage 9 Area attack.
So here are their final abilities:
Dodge 14, Parry 14, Toughness 6, Fortitude 9, Will 7
Oversized Mallet: +14 to hit, 6 Damage (DC 21)
Dodge 8, Parry 8, Toughness 17, Fortitude 17, Will 9
Unarmed attack: +7 to hit, 18 damage (DC 33)
Shockwave: Area Burst Damage 9 (DC 24, Dodge DC 19 for half effect)
This is the basis, everything else can be done easily on the fly using the same stats. For example, if I want Wisecrack to change it up a bit, I can have her pullout a boxing glove gun and give it some quick stats: +14 Attack, Rank 6 Ranged Affliction (DC 16, Dazed/Stunned/Incapacitated). I don't need to worry about what her Dexterity is, then buy ranks of a Ranged Attack skill or anything like that, it's not important that she has a full character sheet because to run the encounter I only need these vital stats.
That's pretty much it! As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, your mileage may vary depending on the type of powers your villains might have. If you have a player whose character uses Fire Based attacks and you decide your villain should be immune to fire, that changes things quite a bit. If your villain has the Summon effect, you may want to account the power level of the Summoned minion into your challenge rank as it could be another enemy with it's own set of actions. This also doesn't take into account some of the more dynamic aspects of Mutants and Masterminds: Tactics, movement, complications are not really a consideration as those vary wildly. At it's most basic level, this should give you a great starting point for building a balanced encounter to challenge your players!
Feedback is welcome! As well as your own tips for building encounters in MnM 3e!
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[Post 2]
Author : Corellon
Date : Apr 22 '13 6:28pm
The original source for this method seems to be Jackelope King (www.atomicthinktank.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5416) and can be read at http://www.atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?t=26165.
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